


A Delicate Thing, A Desperate Thing

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Breathplay, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-10
Updated: 2008-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:13:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You are his, as you have always been. And glad to be."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Delicate Thing, A Desperate Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: bondage, breathplay, casual violence.

You appreciate the symbolism, even as blatant as this is. The containment of desire, restricted until almost breathless but filling up the room with red lust, with every slight exhalation. You are his, as you have always been. And glad to be.

You smile at him as he pulls on the bonds; he doesn't smile back. His eyes are slick and black. He has been hard since you took off your shirt but arousal hasn't shaken his hand, his fingers run smooth circles over your neck, your collarbone, narrowing hoops around your nipples and the pad of his thumb rubbing the centre red.

Around your wrists he has bound a silk tie - very expensive, you think; you _think_ the one from his best tuxedo - and a set of knots so clever that you are are tempted to ask where he learnt them, only his fingers are over your mouth, closing over your nose, and you feel faint, you forget. And as the blood begins to clamour in your head his hand slips away into your hair, threading through strands now wet with sweat; his thumb brushing the lobe of your ear makes your hips jump up against his other hand which is resting on your hipbone, two fingers curled in a belt loop of the jeans you are still wearing, pulling. He pulls hard enough to raise your hips and make a shadow between your belly and your jeans; the top button pops and he bends his head down to the place he uncovered, sucks the skin up into his mouth and raises blood to the surface. You exhale, trying not to make a sound; he unhooks his fingers and strokes his hand, so gently you can hardly feel it through the denim, over the hard place between your thighs.

"Toby," you say, unsure why you have.

He looks up from the contemplation of your bare stomach, into your eyes.

"Sam."

"_Please_?"

He nods - a barely perceptible movement of the head. His eyes seem to glint in the semi-darkness of his bedroom at midnight. You close your own eyes and then he is kissing you, his beard scratching your cheek, all prickles and scrapes across your chin, and his tongue in your mouth, and his knee between your thighs. You buck your hips against him, rubbing desperately, suddenly pressing for the release you know he won't allow just yet, knowing that your asking only makes him worse, knowing that the next thing will be --

_slap_

\-- the palm of his hand flat against your cheek and instant pain, a warm, wet throb in your jaw and your erection hard enough from a single strike that you stop pushing against him, because suddenly you don't want this to stop, you don't ever want this to stop.

"_Sam_," he whispers, as though he's sorry when you know he never is, not really. If you opened your eyes now you would see a high flush in his cheeks and his eyes sparkling, and a stillness in his body - his own desire wrapping around muscles and tendons, holding him until his moment arrives and nothing in his eyes but the playing out of all the ways this might go: the delicate threads of possibility - all the ways you might end up making him come.

He strokes your face, brushes his own cheek against yours, kisses the centre of the bruise. He isn't sorry, but the rhythms of his breathing sound penitent, wrapping round and round your face, warm breaths, soothing the pain. Your hands strain for him; he kisses your wrists, and slips away just as your fingers catch in his beard, against his mouth.

You know you're on your own once his hands go to his belt buckle, unfastening and unzipping with fingers still deft and steady, but fast now, too fast. He is hard, frighteningly, insistently hard and you stare at him as you always do, because you can't help yourself, shifting against the bindings around your wrists, trying to get closer, to turn to him.

He makes it easier for you.

His erection is high, pushed up to the zipper and fabric of his pants. He hisses as the skin catches there and, with his eyes briefly closed against the pain, you find an echo of vulnerability in his face - suddenly not so dark, not so distant, suddenly someone you recognise and not this stranger who takes you into his bed.

_Toby_.

He shrugs out of his shirt and rips off his undershirt with what looks like anger but which you know is a decade or more of dense frustrations, curled like clouds around him. And you can't help wanting to help. He is your friend, after all.

His hand is wrapped around his cock as he bends to kiss you again. A proper kiss this time, slow and languorous, his tongue licking at the fullest part of your lower lip and nothing in him to suggest urgency or significance, or mastery. Just a kiss, gentle. But as he shifts away his hips slip closer and his cock brushes your face and then his palm covers your forehead, pressing you down and forcing the breath from your throat so that you have to open your mouth --

You almost gag as he pushes in but the discomfort lessens as he begins to move, methodically but slowly, with a kind of uncoiling gentleness, like a clock winding down, in and out of your mouth. You close your eyes and try to slacken your jaw, shift your hips, pull your wrists one more time against the tie and his knots which refuse to give. He strokes the hand which is not wrapped around the base of his dick through your hair, heavy on your forehead, telling you if not in so many words to quieten down, to settle, stop struggling - it won't get you anywhere.

You close your eyes tighter and breathe through your nose the scent of him - sweat and lust and the bitter and unmistakable smell of his need for you; holding you tight in his hands because he can't stand to let you go; half frightened, half exalting, binding you close and half believing that you don't know that the day you walk away is the day his understanding of the world cracks in two.

You open your eyes. A trickle of sweat is running down his belly, making the curls of half-black hair there wet, close to your face as he bends over you, trying to get deeper, always deeper. His thigh muscles are quivering against your cheek and the round of your shoulder and it won't be much longer, so you open, wide and wet and trying, trying so damn hard not to come just from the sight of him - bent crooked, his left arm braced beside your chest and the other holding the bedrail, so close to your own hands you can almost stroke his fingers, his zipper pulled open and the warm wool of his trousers coarse against your cheek, your neck, rubbing a little blush there which your collar will hide tomorrow. His arms are shaking and he jerks forward as his right hand scrabbles for both of yours, squeezing your fingers hard enough that you listen for the incipient _snap_ \--

He comes in a small burst of white and a starburst of colour behind your eyes. A small set of sighs which don't sound particularly special, except to you, because you can hear the sound of him unravelling, tenderness let go into the air, dissipating now and in a minute or two, to be completely denied. Then he is kissing you, without bothering to make sure that you've spat out all his semen. He holds your face in his hands and whispers words which don't mean anything though they echo in your head long after, slipping through the places where your defences are weak, curled around his body, after.

You ponder, after, the reasoning that possession might be the same as love, and that being tied to his bed is the same as him giving you a set of keys. He is asleep now, exhausted, turned away from you. You press your face into the curls which lie low on his neck. You pass a hand through them, push the hair up to reveal pale skin, the colour of moonlight. He moans in his sleep, quiet, almost like a child might. You kiss the curve of his neck, his shoulder. You slip your hand down to cover the curve of his belly, let your thumb rub against the line of black hair, thrumming against his skin. His name repeats over and over, a constant drumbeat, in your head. An excess of love never to be properly sated: a constant ache. And soon it will be time to walk away and the knowledge is growing bright and sour and black in your belly and you press your body up against his and squeeze your eyes tight shut.

"_Sam_?"

"Sorry. Nothing. Sorry." You kiss him as he turns to face you, groggy with sleep and the fatigue of the truly well-fucked. "Go back to sleep."

"Don't stay up all night, Sam," he murmurs.

"No, I won't."

He shifts in the bed, rubs his fingers into your hairline, into the place at your temples where a headache has started to grow.

"Okay?"

You nod, smile. "Okay."

"Okay."

You make a wild pass for his mouth and land at his chin - a desperate thing, this kiss, something impossible and already drifting away; an image of him in a darkened room which is slowly moving further away from you. He lifts your face with his thumb stroking your cheekbone, presses his lips to yours.

"Tell me what it's all about tomorrow, okay?"

His eyes are black again, serious. You smile, mostly because in that moment you find him beautiful. You place a kiss on his cheek, then nod.

"Yeah, okay."

He stays half turned towards you, one arm flung out - allowing if not inviting your head to rest on his chest. And since you do not know when such an offer will ever be made again you put your head down, and close your eyes. As sleep drifts in you think you feel his fingers, stroking, twisting, making patterns in your hair.


End file.
